Lost World The Jurassic Park

Lost World The Jurassic ParkLost World The Jurassic Park is an action-adventure video game developed by DreamWorks Interactive and Appaloosa Interactive, and published by Electronic Arts and Sega for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, respectively, in 1997. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is based on the film of the same name, which in turn is based on the novel by Michael Crichton. In 1998, a special edition of the game was released for the Sony PlayStation as a Greatest Hits title and featured several modifications to the gameplay.

Gameplay – Lost World The Jurassic Park

The Saturn and PlayStation versions feature identical gameplay.^[3] The game features a side-scroller perspective. There are 5 characters in all throughout the course of the game, each with their own special abilities and attributes: Compsognathus, Human Hunter, Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex, and Sarah Harding, who is also known as the “Human Prey”.

During gameplay, the character must complete all levels sequentially to gain access to the next character.^[4] For each character, there are “DNA bonuses” in each level that can be collected for access to storyboard art for that particular character.^[5] Actor Jeff Goldblum briefly reprised his role as Ian Malcolm for a secret ending that the player can access if every DNA bonus is collected. The secret ending is a video of Goldblum congratulating the player for finishing the game, but suggesting to go outside and do other activities instead.^[6]

The Lost World: Jurassic Park ignores the plot of the film, despite featuring some of its dinosaurs and being set on “Site B”,^[3]^[7] an island also known as Isla Sorna and used as InGen‘s dinosaur breeding site. The plot varies with every character, each one struggling to survive on the island, populated by over 20 species of dinosaurs in an environment of escalating chaos. Item pickups for the dinosaur characters are limited to food needed to maintain their strength, while item pickups for the human characters include gas canisters, automatic weapons, health refills, and rocket launchers.^[8]

The playable dinosaurs’ chapters consist of traversing various parts of the island, defending against other predators as well as InGen hunters. The “Human Hunter” chapters are largely based in more urban environments, including an underground complex, a geothermal center and an InGen lab. Although objectives are never elaborated on, the Hunter’s goal is to eliminate any dinosaur threat. The final chapters involve Harding escaping the island on a cargo ship.

Development – Lost World The Jurassic Park

DreamWorks Interactive announced that they were working on a video game based on The Lost World: Jurassic Park in the third quarter of 1996.^[9] In March 1997, Electronic Arts announced that it had secured the distribution and publishing rights for a PlayStation video game adaptation of the film, as part of a deal with DreamWorks.^[10] During the first two months of pre-production, producer Patrick Gilmore held daily meetings with his development team to develop a variety of ideas for the game.

The ideas were ultimately put into a concept document that included more than 100 pages, some of which offered storyboards and detailed descriptions of each scene in the game.^[11] Gilmore said, “The Lost World could have been just another game where you kill dinosaurs, but instead we created an ambiance that enables you to feel what the hunter and the hunted are going through. Too many games hand you a gun and say ‘Go shoot’ without giving you a feel for what’s happening on the other side of the barrel.”^[12]

Concept artist Matt Hall created each of the game’s creatures using skeletal references. He said, “I wanted to make sure everything could be backed up by the latest scientific theories regarding posture and musculature. When selecting color, I had much more freedom, but an effort was made to study natural color patterns of animals which exist today.”^[13] The creatures’ designs were based on computer-generated models created for the film by Industrial Light & Magic.^[3][7] Creature designs were also based on photographs of dinosaur maquettes that were created by artist Stan Winston for the film.^[13][14] 3D creatures were then created as low polygon models combined with Hall’s sketches.^[15]